Etymo

bagel

A ring-shaped bread roll.

Played on · Day 20 · word 5 of 5

Bagel came from Yiddish.

How bagel reached English

oldest first

Simplified path. The puzzle showed the main steps; the full route is being checked.

  1. Yiddish

    beygl

    ‘Bagel’

    into English

  2. English

    bagel

    ‘The ring-shaped bread’

The story of bagel

Bagel came into English from Yiddish beygl. Its deeper Germanic background concerns a ring, which fits the bread’s familiar shape. The direct donor is Yiddish even though other languages help explain its older ancestry.

A deeper Middle High German form is reconstructed in Merriam-Webster and is not required for this answer.

Source

Merriam-Webster · bagel

The word’s etymology and recorded senses.

Related

The object’s outline can be a better clue to its history than its ingredients.

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